I believe in simplicity, minimalism, and have an ardent willingness to push the bounds, envisioning the betterment of usable and practical solutions.

Business

After multiple delays and hesitations, I have finally released Theme6, a site dedicated to carefully crafted and well designed themes and templates. I’m lucky to have partnered with an awesome designer – Saneef Ansari. Our first release is a Typographically tailored theme for WordPress – Acorn.

Acorn is a mobile-first, retina-ready responsive theme focused on typography and content. It is designed to be clean, simple, minimal and to stay out of the way to focus full attention to your blog posts, articles and content.

Our idea is to keep it as simple as possible, without the need for any additional plugins nor custom fields. It would work without any special need to add/edit the contents of the blog posts or articles.

We are thrilled and would be adding more well designed themes in future.

Online marketing is a whole new world for traditional businesses and entrepreneurs looking for an eCommerce goldmine, and email marketing is at once the most powerful force in this world and also the most maligned one.

Think email marketing, and the word “spam” comes to mind. It’s not edible either. The stigma is real enough, but you don’t have to be a spammer to send an email. Besides, can you really afford to ignore a channel that provides an ROI of $40 for every dollar spent?

You may think that you can get hold of everyone on social media, so why bother with emails? Well, here’s news for you – Email traffic is still the second largest source of visitors for shopping sites, after search engines.

Secondly, there are more email accounts than social media accounts. Everyone with a social media account has an email, but not everyone with an email is one active on social media. Also, there’s a world of difference in how you market your company, brand, product and yourself through email and on social media. Email is a 1-on-1 communication system, and that’s always going to be more effective in sales and marketing.

Technological advancements are being introduced at increasingly fast rates around the world. Several companies, especially those operating in the Information Technology industry, have had to make adjustments to their strategies because being there first can identify you as a revolutionary organization that is known for innovation. Whereas getting there a bit late can label you a follower, which is a label that is extremely hard to shrug off.

As technology advances, examples being cloud technology, an increase in viewers of online television and online gaming follows, and an apparent need was identified by the FCC for significant enhancements in the infrastructure of internet providers to support such advancements.

How Does the Initiative Affect You

Although the advantages are easy to identify, the cons of the operation are minimal but they do affect most consumers. Internet providers are now going to have to make further enhancements that may not have been deemed necessary to sustain, or promote, their business for at least a few more years to come. However, this initiative launched by the FCC requires them to fast track these enhancements, which are unplanned, and rather significant investments for a majority of the internet service providers.

The bottom line is that this investment, although it is one that would very probably be lucrative and beneficial for these organizations in the long run, would most probably have to be incurred by you, the consumer. Most organizations would incur a massive cut on their short term profits. This hit couldn’t have come at a worse time, especially because some of these organizations, who didn’t have much to show their shareholders during the recession, were finally looking to show profits and make up for lost revenue.

But now, with the FCC initiative in effect, these organizations are anticipating at least a couple more quarters, if not more, of slim profits. To increase their margin of profits, these organizations are most likely going to revise their pricing strategy, even if it means the loss of a few customers here and there.

In50hrs is an interesting concept, where ideas meet doer to build something in a short time – a weekend.

In50hrs is The Idea-To-Prototype Event. Entrepreneurs (or Idea Smiths), Developers and Product Designers come together to work on audacious ideas and build working prototypes (MVP) over a Weekend.

In50hrs have few chapters happening across major Indian cities –

Bangalore: Nov 23-25, 2012

Pune: Dec 14-16, 2012

Chennai: Jan 11-13, 2013

I registered for the Bangalore Chapter. I have few ideas and I’ll also be doing the design part – HTML, CSS, Graphics. I can also write codes and be part of the development and help design the product in direct co-ordination with a developer.

If you’re a developer or a student who have good programming skill and have registered for In50hrs, Bangalore, I’d welcome you to contact me to see how we can work together. Do check out my personal page to see if I’m cool enough to be your partner.

Imagine the visual aesthetic of social bookmarking site Delicious, mixed with the sociability of Facebook and Twitter, with a bit of Google+ organizational sophistication for good measure, and you’ll have the web’s best up and coming social media network. Already at number three, can Pinterest make a dent in Twitter’s marketshare? Here’s a few reasons why that answer is a resounding YES.

Visual Appeal and Ease of Use

When you log in to Pinterest for the first time, you’re immediately reminded of the cork pin-boards of the local pool or the quad at the local college. The whole set up is intuitive and immediately socially interactive.

Adding a new link is as simple as clicking “Add Pin” and within moments the Pin finds and adds a relevant image for your link and makes it the centerpiece. Images naturally attract the eye, and the clicks and there is a wide variety of topics listed on the site.

Despite recent updates, Twitter is still very text heavy and is a flowing torrent of quickly moving information. Pinterest is designed to be browsed at leisure and has appeals to someone looking for a more laid back, stress free browsing experience.

Explosive Growth

In the past six months Pinterest growth has been exploding, increasing 40 fold to almost eleven million users and is growing faster than any other website in history. And consider this: Pinterest has a waiting list for new users! After signing up there is a delay of a few days to a week before one is allowed to log in and start using the service.

In this way, Pinterest is able to control and monitor growth. The exclusivity also has the side effect of generating even more interest as new users hear about and would like to join this brand new – “exclusive” network.

Revenue Generation

When it comes down to it, the main factor responsible for Pinterest’s continued growth comes down to money. And Pinterest generates more revenue than both Twitter and Facebook. 17.4% of social media e-Commerce transactions was driven by Pinterest last quarter, up from just 1.2% a little over a year ago. That kind of revenue generation in such a short time is almost unheard of, and is projected to climb to 40% by the close of 2012. This revenue is estimated to be mostly non-credit transactions, and may even lower the average US credit card debt per family.

Conclusions

With it’s easy on the eye looks and it’s extremely user friendly interface, Pinterest attracts even the most burnt out social media networker. They’re users are mostly women in the highly desirable 25-34 age demographic, and help drive sales of products across multiple retail categories. This kind of buying force is a first in the history of the web, and is only expected to increase over the next three years. Taken in total, this almost certainly spells out the toppling of Twitter as it’s usurped by the newcomer Pinterest.